Donald Rumsfeld Quotes

The first duty of a newspaper is to be accurate. If it be accurate, it follows that it is fair.

Fact-checking doesn't exist primarily because some of us are liars and cheats. It exists because writers will be writers, much as they may mean to be historians.

Not to be weirdly glib, but as a reporter, you should be honest all the time.

I think it's time for the people and the press, in particular, to be more vigilant about not giving equal weight to lies as they give the truth.

I was taught that newspapers were supposed to find out if rumors were true, and if not, not print them.

A journalists's job is not to be balanced. It is to be accurate.

What I say is that there are not half a dozen papers in the United States which tamper with the news, which publish what they know to be false. But if I thought I had done no better than that, I would be ashamed to own a paper. You have to make everyone connected with the paper believe that accuracy is to a newspaper what virtue is to a woman.

Columnists must make sure that when they describe an event, they are being accurate in their description. When they quote someone, they are required to do so accurately. Errors that are made must be corrected openly and quickly.

I consider what I do on Deadspin to be based in the foundations of journalism, yes, based on the foundations of journalism that I have been trained and that I certainly use when I write for GQ and The New York Times and so on. Certainly, I think the language can be a little looser on the web, but I am held to the same standards and accuracy everyone else is.

Our job is to get as close to the verified truth as is possible.

It is better to be approximately right than to be precisely wrong.

You have to have a system that vets everything that comes out of a candidate’s mouth.

I think you get into trouble as an author and a journalist when, rather than owning the gaps, you try to elide them.

Certainly in my own body of reporting, I was very acutely aware of the risk of any mischaracterized journalism and the need for anything I put out to be absolutely bulletproof.

It seems that in the rush to be the first one to the story, the media overstates things. Not maliciously; I don't think they're intentionally misleading. But the credibility gap is already there, and in this rush to get to the story first, a lot of mainstream outlets just erode their credibility further.

More and more, journalism seems to have hopped out of Truth's pocket and crept into another.

I need to know everything inside quote marks is true.

My goal was never to withhold information; my goal was to make sure everything was accurate, and frequently it wasn't.

In my career, I do not stop for news when it's not true.

I am no historian but have tried to stick tight to the facts.

As a journalist - or as a writer - my obligation is to come as close to the truth as I possibly can. And that's not as close to someone else's truth, but the truth as I see it.

I think it's a lack of journalistic integrity to print things with anonymous sources.

If something is presented as a fact, it has to be correct.

I tell the truth. That's my training as a reporter.

I think the media's responsibility is to get to the bottom of things - to get to the truth.